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cog_nomenTitle: Four of Clubs
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
LUCID LOG HR. 100 - SHARED
Lobby is the same wide, pristine space I remember, designed to hold us while we wait to move on, like any number of lobbies in reality. As always, the only occupants are us and the furniture. Something outside the big bay windows, however, draws my eye.
The sky is not solid - not blue or seamless grey with cloud, or the black of night. Instead it's clouded black and yellow, angry and ominously churning. It's a storm in the making. My eyes drop and find that the woods seem closer, like they've crept up on our building since the last time I'd stood there. I tell myself it's my imagination. Had to be. Why now, otherwise?
"What in god's name?" Con's voice sounds soft in my ear, but closer by far than I expect, and it startles me, his proximity.
"You ever seen it do that?" I ask, pretend I'm looking out at the sky and not the forest, and he's looking up at it and so he misses when the underbrush starts to tremble and shake, starts to sway furiously in one spot and then it appears, coming faster and harder than it even had in real life, running and running in time to my hammering heart.
It's half torn apart, I can see the gleaming white bone of its skull, one eye dislodged. In the hole where it should have lain there is still some sick intelligence - unmirrored in the glassy brown eye on the other side. That dark eye which must have been so deep and clear you could see all the way down into its depths. Dark entrails hang beneath, twisting and fluttering wildly in its exertions. Just, somehow its still running, still driving forward on impulse, on momentum, and I can't find any words to warn Constantine to look down from the sky.
The stag slams into the big windows, shattering itself and them, impacting inward as its single remaining antler broke against the thick class, staining the spider webs of breaks with blood as it slides down.
The noise is huge, deafening, and I'm not sure if it's Con's voice of mine that shrieks out startlement. Maybe it's both of us. Belatedly, I stagger backwards, my vision filled with cracked glass. If the pane hadn't stopped it, it would have crashed straight into me and for a second I forget that death here means only waking.
Con's arms come around me, drawing me back further as if at any instant the stag will get up again, put itself through the weak spot it created, and through the protective enclosure of his arms I can still see the woods.
There are dozens of wolves there, loping back and forth along the edge in indecision, trying to decide if they dare risk all that flat, exposed land to claim their kill.
They all have blue eyes.
-
We woke in motion, still with our instincts screaming danger, fight or flight as we scrabbled off our tables to find some place defensible before we got hold of ourselves.
Constantine was breathing hard, one hand gripping over his thundering heart like he could hold it into his chest.
"What the hell was that?" he asked - half challenged. We both knew it hadn't come from him, but the question seemed so ridiculous, so infuriating.
"You already-" I started, gulped air, but I couldn't get the tone of my voice to lower. "- already fucking know. I told you." But as I said it, I realized I hadn't. I shook myself, tried to line up words in my head before I said them. "Just an old bad dream. Nothing. It won't happen again.
Con was closing the space between us, backing me into a corner as I moved away from him.
"The hell it's nothing," Con said, as he put his hands on my forearms and tried to shake some sense into me. To get me to look at him. "You can't just write that shit off. You gotta tell me."
I'd never seen him this assertive before. I realized it was for me, to protect me. I could have cried, but I shouted instead, tore myself free. I could not cope with that much input while I tried to sort out which Constantine he was, what he knew, how it was okay to touch him. What I would have to tell him again.
"Back the fuck off!" And I could hear my voice climb to defensive decibels, but I couldn't stop it. I needed space. Time. To sort myself and he wouldn't give it to me. "Mind your own fuckin' business, Fitzweiss. What the hell do you care anyway?"
I didn't mean it, didn't mean any of it, but I needed him to go away. To be the other Constantine, the one who already knew. So I stuck the knives in where I knew they would sink deep.
His eyes closed to me for the first time ever as he backed off, injured - and I had done it on purpose. I hated myself for saying just what I knew would harpoon him through the heart. He swallowed.
He wanted to hit me, I think. I deserved it, but instead he just showed his teeth, was the bigger man.
"Alright," he said, and threw his hands up in the universal gesture for 'surrender'. "But this ain't over. We are gonna talk about this."
Then he stormed out, seemed to expect I would, too. He left me like I wanted him to, to give me enough space to think it over. Call him back. Apologize. It only took a minute of deep breathing to realize how badly I'd just fucked up. How much I wanted him to be there. But it was too late to call him back.
And I could fix this on my own.
-
I plug myself in, to let myself dream it out, so angry and frustrated that I hardly care how sore my whole body feels, how tired. They say the brain doesn't feel pain, but there was a raw, tender feeling when I plugged in, like being penetrated too many times. I ignored it, plugged in anyway. I needed this, to make it better, even if it wasn't real.
The dream went wrong from the start, leaving me standing in a busy road while cars swerved around me and something else, heedless of any need for help. My eyes focused on something laying still in the road, a trail of bright red trickling from its center, and I forgot the speeding cars. My insides crawled up my throat and I moved forward in a sudden rush, against the flow of madly swerving cars, and it feels like it takes forever just to reach Constantine.
I realize it's not a dream but a memory, his memory - I shouldn't have it. Except when I reach out to turn him over, the wound has moved those few crucial inches to the right, gone through his heart instead of where the scar I've memorized lives.
"Jesus!" I say, trying to press my hands over the hemorrhaging blood, feeling the stuttering heart beat through my finger tips like each unrhythmic surge shakes the whole fucking world and leaves it trembling in wait of the next.
His eyes turned and focused, wild and away, but they still found me somehow, still landed on mine. The same way I could always see him through his eyes, I saw the thought form in his mind that I was there, and he was going to be okay.
"Hey," he says, his voice rattling and not all there, more air than sound, and, "Love you."
I feel his heart stop struggling to beat. It goes still instead. I am completely powerless and I can't even think of anything to do but to grab blindly for him, try to lift him - to get him out of the street where someone can get to us, help us.
The sound of a deep, impossibly loud horn and the feeling of impact, all my bones breaking apart under a much greater force before the whole of me swept away like a tide, unable to resist that much force and pressure with something so frail and weak as a body.
I woke up in a panic, but sluggish, like a heavy weight had settled on my chest, my limbs and pressed me flat. I wanted to be gasping for air, fueling my racing heart, but the breaths came raggedly unheeding two out of three requests for air. Everything was un-coordinated, like moving and drowning, like pulling a tangle of puppet strings just to get something, anything to jerk. I got myself off the couch, hit the floor hard enough to jar numbness and pain into my back, and got my body to gasp instinctively that way. I reached up with a blunt, wild gesture, and disengaged the plugs from the back of my head, trying to will myself to calm down - it'd pass. It always passed - faster, if I calmed down.
But it wasn't passing. I lay still, fighting for every breath, fighting to hold them for long enough to oxygenate me and make up for the ones I couldn't get. I was - suffocating on dry land, in cold, clean laboratory air. I don't know for how long, but the lights came on and I dragged in my first breath in what felt like forever, and suddenly Constantine was there. Relief cut through my panic, even if I couldn't quite focus on his exclamations. Everything seemed underwater, muted. I could hear his voice but not the words as he lifted me up, grasping for a pulse at my neck, demanding answers, I think. Taking my vitals.
I actually had a moment to think as his mouth closed over mine for the first time to begin cardiopulmonary respiration, that this would be the perfect time for it to shut off again like it always had before. To leave me rattled, but functional.
Consciousness faded, but Con breathed for me as long as it took for help to arrive.
-
I was barely aware for a while. Don't know how long, but sometimes sounds, sights would filter in. I became aware that I was in a hospital, confined to a bed, helpless. I could almost always sense Con there. The way the machines would force air into my lungs in regular, automatic doses. I thought, 'jesus, what have I done to myself?', and I wanted it to stop. For a long time, it was the only thought I could manage between bouts of blankness.
It was only three days. My time sense was all fucked up, and I'd slip in and out, felt like it was out for longer each time. I dreamed a little, incomprehensible noise.
Then, the 'in' moments started to grow longer again. My eyes processed more information. Con was still sitting there, by some damn miracle, and I felt like it was months later.
I couldn't decide if I'd endure the same for him, or if I'd have given him the mercy I'd wanted when it felt like it would go on forever.
I could feel myself getting better.
-
One day, I sat up at last my muscles obeying my commands, and caught Con sleeping in
There is a commotion around me, doctors and nurses, I can hear Con's voice rising
his chair with a half dozen paper cups, coffee stained, in the trash can by the bedside. His
to levels I can't remember ever hearing it reach before, painting a certain desperation onto
eyelashes were resting on his cheeks, like a stillness in the storm of my emotions. I remember
words I couldn't make out. Just the occasional 'no' in flat denial, before unfamiliar voices
clearly how that looked. He wasn't dreaming, I think, but his brows were still knit a little.
answer again and again. A lot of people are here, a press of bodies.
Worried - for me?
The respirator fought to put air in my lungs and I clawed the thing out. Possibly the worst
A hand takes mine but my eyes won't obey my desire to look downward and see them
feeling I've ever had was half-choking that thing out of my air pipe. I didn't even know if my
joined. Calluses on the trigger finger and the bridge of the thumb so - I know it's Con's touch
lungs would work without it , but I had to have it out. IVs pulled, my body protested my motions
"His eyes are open," Con says, "Look, he is right there." More voices answer, and there is a
with weakness, and I yanked my catheter almost hard enough to make me see stars, but I kept
violent motion transmitted through the touch of hands, a shudder maybe. "You can't just -
myself from swearing. The monitor alarms would go up any second then, calling nurses from
can't just fucking shut him off," Con tries in sheer desperation, "He's my partner, he's a person,
across the whole continent to lug in the crash cart or call priests or whatever, so what I had was
you can't, I don't care what anyone else wants. You can't." And he is throwing out words like
just a little bit of time to do something important.
he can put enough together to overcome this.
"Con," I croaked, when I couldn't reach him, but my voice was this tiny breath, barely
I want to close my fingers on his, but they don't listen, nothing listens to me anymore. I'm
anything and he was sleeping like he hadn't in months. Maybe he hadn't. I fought everything and
a deaf mute, a paraplegic, my mind has forgotten the language. Another motion and Con's
reached for him. Got my hand into his Bears t-shirt, a good enough fistful to drag him toward me
hand leaves mine, I feel like the ground's turned upside down when it goes, when I understand
and haul myself until he and I both closed the distance and his eyes opened. I didn't let him wake
what it is he's fighting for. Just a couple more days, if he can win me a couple of days - I won't
up all the way before I kissed him, half suspended in the air as we were.
let him down. I can feel it, about to lift.
His eyes opened wide, and he tried to push me back to say something, but I didn't let him
But he's not beside me , and his voice is going up again, volume raising with each
until he really realized that I fucking meant what I was doing more than I'd ever meant anything
sentence. My field of view is a hazy unfocused outline of a bank of machines and Constantine
else I'd ever done in my life. Alarms came to shrill, shrieking awareness. Doctors crashed in, and
crashes into it, blocking them with his body as if he's standing alone to block the advance of the
Con tensed, aware of the eyes on us, but only to get his hands up on my shoulders and push me
enemy across this bridge. Hands -from too many directions for me to process descend on him,
back more onto the hospital bed so we didn't fall onto the floor.
pulling, and the assault makes me angry, outraged with my helplessness to stop them from
"David," he said, and I could see his wet eyes and a hundred unsaid words as doctors and
yanking my partner away. They crowd him with bodies and even though he's not a small guy,
nurses clamored over me, exclaiming.
he's only one and eventually they wear him down.
It didn't matter , all that cacophony of sounds and bodies. It seemed to fade away,
He's just screaming now, I can't see him, but I can hear his anger reach a boiling point
because our eyes never left each other. He understood. And my heart felt lighter, as if it could
when a doctor comes into view, touching controls I think. Machines warn with beeps and shrills,
go still in that moment and let Con's beat for it instead, and it would keep us both alive. He
and suddenly my rhythms stop. I notice when the machines stop pounding air into my lungs and
looks like all the air has either come into his world or gone out of it.
will myself breathe - breathe!
"I thought I'd lost you," he said - I couldn't hear him underneath all the noise, but I see the
The nurses shut the machines off and silence the alarms, but not Con's yelling. A
words form on his lips, and as a thousand things seemed to happen at once, he's just the stillness
command from the doctor at the machines must do that, because suddenly they falter, and
at the center of that storm, sunk into his chair in sheer disbelief and smiling as if the sun shone
get wavering, like he's fighting more than strength can win. My eyes obey my will to turn toward
just for him. Like the skies had opened up and given him the greatest gift he could ever ask for,
the door, his hands on the edge going lax, sedated, as they pull him back, and the last thing he
and he didn't know that him feeling that way was the greatest thing I could ever ask for.
says as he loses his battle is-
-
"David."
Con sounds like he can't believe it every time he says it - every time he's said it, this whole week. Doctors had said things like 'miracle' and 'remission', like what was wrong with me was cancer instead of equal parts broken heart and idiocy. 'Remission' was apt for both conditions. Either was likely to flare up again at any given point, knowing my history.
I'd been okay to walk - lean, really - my way out of the hospital in two days. Restless enough to do it, too. Too many people around the hospital all the time. I'd delighted in the way Constantine unabashedly braced me with one hand wrapped around my middle and the other planted flat against the center of my chest.
"Fishing," I'd said, grabbing Con's hand when he looked distracted by all the attention. He wanted to kiss me again, make sure the first time hadn't been a fluke. He wanted to say everything he had inside all that shit he'd been holding. "Let's go fishing. I'm on sick leave."
"Yeah," he'd laughed, "I love fishing."
So here we are, two old dreamers in the middle of our lives, in a timeshare by the ocean, and I can smell the salt and the sun strikes my skin so hot I felt my past and sins burn away like absolution. I could look in his eyes as long as I wanted to and see he wasn't trying to hide anymore. Like the weight had come off my shoulders as much as his.
"Yeah, Con," I answer, again, and reach for his hand. He gives it to me, and we're standing on the porch like teens on spring break, leaning in to kiss with no eyes watching. We did it like the world was staring, like it was more important than fire in winter, and our bodies lean toward each other.
I take all of him that I can get, one long line of us as seamless as if we were made that way.
"We aren't gonna catch any fish," he tells me in the space our need for air creates between us, and I laugh.
"I fucking hate fishing," I tell him, and take his hand, take the lead. On the beach, the sun is cutting wounds through the clouds to land on the sand and ocean in wide swaths of clearly defined light. We sink barefoot into the warm sand where we walk and two sets of deep footprints follow behind us to the sea.
We just stand, his hand in mine. I wouldn't mind if it was forever. Even as the clouds conquer the sun again and drift shadow over us like-
-
Darkness.
The End.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
LUCID LOG HR. 100 - SHARED
Lobby is the same wide, pristine space I remember, designed to hold us while we wait to move on, like any number of lobbies in reality. As always, the only occupants are us and the furniture. Something outside the big bay windows, however, draws my eye.
The sky is not solid - not blue or seamless grey with cloud, or the black of night. Instead it's clouded black and yellow, angry and ominously churning. It's a storm in the making. My eyes drop and find that the woods seem closer, like they've crept up on our building since the last time I'd stood there. I tell myself it's my imagination. Had to be. Why now, otherwise?
"What in god's name?" Con's voice sounds soft in my ear, but closer by far than I expect, and it startles me, his proximity.
"You ever seen it do that?" I ask, pretend I'm looking out at the sky and not the forest, and he's looking up at it and so he misses when the underbrush starts to tremble and shake, starts to sway furiously in one spot and then it appears, coming faster and harder than it even had in real life, running and running in time to my hammering heart.
It's half torn apart, I can see the gleaming white bone of its skull, one eye dislodged. In the hole where it should have lain there is still some sick intelligence - unmirrored in the glassy brown eye on the other side. That dark eye which must have been so deep and clear you could see all the way down into its depths. Dark entrails hang beneath, twisting and fluttering wildly in its exertions. Just, somehow its still running, still driving forward on impulse, on momentum, and I can't find any words to warn Constantine to look down from the sky.
The stag slams into the big windows, shattering itself and them, impacting inward as its single remaining antler broke against the thick class, staining the spider webs of breaks with blood as it slides down.
The noise is huge, deafening, and I'm not sure if it's Con's voice of mine that shrieks out startlement. Maybe it's both of us. Belatedly, I stagger backwards, my vision filled with cracked glass. If the pane hadn't stopped it, it would have crashed straight into me and for a second I forget that death here means only waking.
Con's arms come around me, drawing me back further as if at any instant the stag will get up again, put itself through the weak spot it created, and through the protective enclosure of his arms I can still see the woods.
There are dozens of wolves there, loping back and forth along the edge in indecision, trying to decide if they dare risk all that flat, exposed land to claim their kill.
They all have blue eyes.
-
We woke in motion, still with our instincts screaming danger, fight or flight as we scrabbled off our tables to find some place defensible before we got hold of ourselves.
Constantine was breathing hard, one hand gripping over his thundering heart like he could hold it into his chest.
"What the hell was that?" he asked - half challenged. We both knew it hadn't come from him, but the question seemed so ridiculous, so infuriating.
"You already-" I started, gulped air, but I couldn't get the tone of my voice to lower. "- already fucking know. I told you." But as I said it, I realized I hadn't. I shook myself, tried to line up words in my head before I said them. "Just an old bad dream. Nothing. It won't happen again.
Con was closing the space between us, backing me into a corner as I moved away from him.
"The hell it's nothing," Con said, as he put his hands on my forearms and tried to shake some sense into me. To get me to look at him. "You can't just write that shit off. You gotta tell me."
I'd never seen him this assertive before. I realized it was for me, to protect me. I could have cried, but I shouted instead, tore myself free. I could not cope with that much input while I tried to sort out which Constantine he was, what he knew, how it was okay to touch him. What I would have to tell him again.
"Back the fuck off!" And I could hear my voice climb to defensive decibels, but I couldn't stop it. I needed space. Time. To sort myself and he wouldn't give it to me. "Mind your own fuckin' business, Fitzweiss. What the hell do you care anyway?"
I didn't mean it, didn't mean any of it, but I needed him to go away. To be the other Constantine, the one who already knew. So I stuck the knives in where I knew they would sink deep.
His eyes closed to me for the first time ever as he backed off, injured - and I had done it on purpose. I hated myself for saying just what I knew would harpoon him through the heart. He swallowed.
He wanted to hit me, I think. I deserved it, but instead he just showed his teeth, was the bigger man.
"Alright," he said, and threw his hands up in the universal gesture for 'surrender'. "But this ain't over. We are gonna talk about this."
Then he stormed out, seemed to expect I would, too. He left me like I wanted him to, to give me enough space to think it over. Call him back. Apologize. It only took a minute of deep breathing to realize how badly I'd just fucked up. How much I wanted him to be there. But it was too late to call him back.
And I could fix this on my own.
-
I plug myself in, to let myself dream it out, so angry and frustrated that I hardly care how sore my whole body feels, how tired. They say the brain doesn't feel pain, but there was a raw, tender feeling when I plugged in, like being penetrated too many times. I ignored it, plugged in anyway. I needed this, to make it better, even if it wasn't real.
The dream went wrong from the start, leaving me standing in a busy road while cars swerved around me and something else, heedless of any need for help. My eyes focused on something laying still in the road, a trail of bright red trickling from its center, and I forgot the speeding cars. My insides crawled up my throat and I moved forward in a sudden rush, against the flow of madly swerving cars, and it feels like it takes forever just to reach Constantine.
I realize it's not a dream but a memory, his memory - I shouldn't have it. Except when I reach out to turn him over, the wound has moved those few crucial inches to the right, gone through his heart instead of where the scar I've memorized lives.
"Jesus!" I say, trying to press my hands over the hemorrhaging blood, feeling the stuttering heart beat through my finger tips like each unrhythmic surge shakes the whole fucking world and leaves it trembling in wait of the next.
His eyes turned and focused, wild and away, but they still found me somehow, still landed on mine. The same way I could always see him through his eyes, I saw the thought form in his mind that I was there, and he was going to be okay.
"Hey," he says, his voice rattling and not all there, more air than sound, and, "Love you."
I feel his heart stop struggling to beat. It goes still instead. I am completely powerless and I can't even think of anything to do but to grab blindly for him, try to lift him - to get him out of the street where someone can get to us, help us.
The sound of a deep, impossibly loud horn and the feeling of impact, all my bones breaking apart under a much greater force before the whole of me swept away like a tide, unable to resist that much force and pressure with something so frail and weak as a body.
I woke up in a panic, but sluggish, like a heavy weight had settled on my chest, my limbs and pressed me flat. I wanted to be gasping for air, fueling my racing heart, but the breaths came raggedly unheeding two out of three requests for air. Everything was un-coordinated, like moving and drowning, like pulling a tangle of puppet strings just to get something, anything to jerk. I got myself off the couch, hit the floor hard enough to jar numbness and pain into my back, and got my body to gasp instinctively that way. I reached up with a blunt, wild gesture, and disengaged the plugs from the back of my head, trying to will myself to calm down - it'd pass. It always passed - faster, if I calmed down.
But it wasn't passing. I lay still, fighting for every breath, fighting to hold them for long enough to oxygenate me and make up for the ones I couldn't get. I was - suffocating on dry land, in cold, clean laboratory air. I don't know for how long, but the lights came on and I dragged in my first breath in what felt like forever, and suddenly Constantine was there. Relief cut through my panic, even if I couldn't quite focus on his exclamations. Everything seemed underwater, muted. I could hear his voice but not the words as he lifted me up, grasping for a pulse at my neck, demanding answers, I think. Taking my vitals.
I actually had a moment to think as his mouth closed over mine for the first time to begin cardiopulmonary respiration, that this would be the perfect time for it to shut off again like it always had before. To leave me rattled, but functional.
Consciousness faded, but Con breathed for me as long as it took for help to arrive.
-
I was barely aware for a while. Don't know how long, but sometimes sounds, sights would filter in. I became aware that I was in a hospital, confined to a bed, helpless. I could almost always sense Con there. The way the machines would force air into my lungs in regular, automatic doses. I thought, 'jesus, what have I done to myself?', and I wanted it to stop. For a long time, it was the only thought I could manage between bouts of blankness.
It was only three days. My time sense was all fucked up, and I'd slip in and out, felt like it was out for longer each time. I dreamed a little, incomprehensible noise.
Then, the 'in' moments started to grow longer again. My eyes processed more information. Con was still sitting there, by some damn miracle, and I felt like it was months later.
I couldn't decide if I'd endure the same for him, or if I'd have given him the mercy I'd wanted when it felt like it would go on forever.
I could feel myself getting better.
-
One day, I sat up at last my muscles obeying my commands, and caught Con sleeping in
There is a commotion around me, doctors and nurses, I can hear Con's voice rising
his chair with a half dozen paper cups, coffee stained, in the trash can by the bedside. His
to levels I can't remember ever hearing it reach before, painting a certain desperation onto
eyelashes were resting on his cheeks, like a stillness in the storm of my emotions. I remember
words I couldn't make out. Just the occasional 'no' in flat denial, before unfamiliar voices
clearly how that looked. He wasn't dreaming, I think, but his brows were still knit a little.
answer again and again. A lot of people are here, a press of bodies.
Worried - for me?
The respirator fought to put air in my lungs and I clawed the thing out. Possibly the worst
A hand takes mine but my eyes won't obey my desire to look downward and see them
feeling I've ever had was half-choking that thing out of my air pipe. I didn't even know if my
joined. Calluses on the trigger finger and the bridge of the thumb so - I know it's Con's touch
lungs would work without it , but I had to have it out. IVs pulled, my body protested my motions
"His eyes are open," Con says, "Look, he is right there." More voices answer, and there is a
with weakness, and I yanked my catheter almost hard enough to make me see stars, but I kept
violent motion transmitted through the touch of hands, a shudder maybe. "You can't just -
myself from swearing. The monitor alarms would go up any second then, calling nurses from
can't just fucking shut him off," Con tries in sheer desperation, "He's my partner, he's a person,
across the whole continent to lug in the crash cart or call priests or whatever, so what I had was
you can't, I don't care what anyone else wants. You can't." And he is throwing out words like
just a little bit of time to do something important.
he can put enough together to overcome this.
"Con," I croaked, when I couldn't reach him, but my voice was this tiny breath, barely
I want to close my fingers on his, but they don't listen, nothing listens to me anymore. I'm
anything and he was sleeping like he hadn't in months. Maybe he hadn't. I fought everything and
a deaf mute, a paraplegic, my mind has forgotten the language. Another motion and Con's
reached for him. Got my hand into his Bears t-shirt, a good enough fistful to drag him toward me
hand leaves mine, I feel like the ground's turned upside down when it goes, when I understand
and haul myself until he and I both closed the distance and his eyes opened. I didn't let him wake
what it is he's fighting for. Just a couple more days, if he can win me a couple of days - I won't
up all the way before I kissed him, half suspended in the air as we were.
let him down. I can feel it, about to lift.
His eyes opened wide, and he tried to push me back to say something, but I didn't let him
But he's not beside me , and his voice is going up again, volume raising with each
until he really realized that I fucking meant what I was doing more than I'd ever meant anything
sentence. My field of view is a hazy unfocused outline of a bank of machines and Constantine
else I'd ever done in my life. Alarms came to shrill, shrieking awareness. Doctors crashed in, and
crashes into it, blocking them with his body as if he's standing alone to block the advance of the
Con tensed, aware of the eyes on us, but only to get his hands up on my shoulders and push me
enemy across this bridge. Hands -from too many directions for me to process descend on him,
back more onto the hospital bed so we didn't fall onto the floor.
pulling, and the assault makes me angry, outraged with my helplessness to stop them from
"David," he said, and I could see his wet eyes and a hundred unsaid words as doctors and
yanking my partner away. They crowd him with bodies and even though he's not a small guy,
nurses clamored over me, exclaiming.
he's only one and eventually they wear him down.
It didn't matter , all that cacophony of sounds and bodies. It seemed to fade away,
He's just screaming now, I can't see him, but I can hear his anger reach a boiling point
because our eyes never left each other. He understood. And my heart felt lighter, as if it could
when a doctor comes into view, touching controls I think. Machines warn with beeps and shrills,
go still in that moment and let Con's beat for it instead, and it would keep us both alive. He
and suddenly my rhythms stop. I notice when the machines stop pounding air into my lungs and
looks like all the air has either come into his world or gone out of it.
will myself breathe - breathe!
"I thought I'd lost you," he said - I couldn't hear him underneath all the noise, but I see the
The nurses shut the machines off and silence the alarms, but not Con's yelling. A
words form on his lips, and as a thousand things seemed to happen at once, he's just the stillness
command from the doctor at the machines must do that, because suddenly they falter, and
at the center of that storm, sunk into his chair in sheer disbelief and smiling as if the sun shone
get wavering, like he's fighting more than strength can win. My eyes obey my will to turn toward
just for him. Like the skies had opened up and given him the greatest gift he could ever ask for,
the door, his hands on the edge going lax, sedated, as they pull him back, and the last thing he
and he didn't know that him feeling that way was the greatest thing I could ever ask for.
says as he loses his battle is-
-
"David."
Con sounds like he can't believe it every time he says it - every time he's said it, this whole week. Doctors had said things like 'miracle' and 'remission', like what was wrong with me was cancer instead of equal parts broken heart and idiocy. 'Remission' was apt for both conditions. Either was likely to flare up again at any given point, knowing my history.
I'd been okay to walk - lean, really - my way out of the hospital in two days. Restless enough to do it, too. Too many people around the hospital all the time. I'd delighted in the way Constantine unabashedly braced me with one hand wrapped around my middle and the other planted flat against the center of my chest.
"Fishing," I'd said, grabbing Con's hand when he looked distracted by all the attention. He wanted to kiss me again, make sure the first time hadn't been a fluke. He wanted to say everything he had inside all that shit he'd been holding. "Let's go fishing. I'm on sick leave."
"Yeah," he'd laughed, "I love fishing."
So here we are, two old dreamers in the middle of our lives, in a timeshare by the ocean, and I can smell the salt and the sun strikes my skin so hot I felt my past and sins burn away like absolution. I could look in his eyes as long as I wanted to and see he wasn't trying to hide anymore. Like the weight had come off my shoulders as much as his.
"Yeah, Con," I answer, again, and reach for his hand. He gives it to me, and we're standing on the porch like teens on spring break, leaning in to kiss with no eyes watching. We did it like the world was staring, like it was more important than fire in winter, and our bodies lean toward each other.
I take all of him that I can get, one long line of us as seamless as if we were made that way.
"We aren't gonna catch any fish," he tells me in the space our need for air creates between us, and I laugh.
"I fucking hate fishing," I tell him, and take his hand, take the lead. On the beach, the sun is cutting wounds through the clouds to land on the sand and ocean in wide swaths of clearly defined light. We sink barefoot into the warm sand where we walk and two sets of deep footprints follow behind us to the sea.
We just stand, his hand in mine. I wouldn't mind if it was forever. Even as the clouds conquer the sun again and drift shadow over us like-
-
Darkness.
The End.